


hear it too / summer shower

by paisana



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Harvard Era, M/M, Slow Burn, Touch Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 08:22:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17321393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paisana/pseuds/paisana
Summary: For no reason at all, Eduardo and Mark can read each other's thoughts and feelings whenever they touch – but then theydon'ttouch (despite really, really wanting to)!





	hear it too / summer shower

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to Mitski for bringing a lot of this out of me and for the title!

He does feel it the first time they meet, but at the time he attributes it to being drunk.

He’s at an AEPi party and he’s convinced himself that he’s not going to be sick despite the numerous drinks he’s accepted from his friends throughout the night. He’s lost track of the group, but he’s always been an impressive mingler when tipsy enough, and he has his eye on a boy with red curly hair and this awkward demeanour anyway. It’s something about the way he hunches his shoulders and fidgets with his cup, the way he stares around the room like he’s thinking of other things or sort of wants to leave; it all works together to make him irresistible somehow.

And so Eduardo goes over with a “Have we met?” and is surprised to find out that they actually have, they’re in the same math tutorial, though the boy never attends except on quiz days. Eduardo thinks that he would usually find this cocky, except that it suits him, it suits Mark, somehow. He doesn’t find himself put off by it.

“So what’s your major, Mark?”

“Computer science.” He gestures to Eduardo’s outfit. “Business?”

Unsure whether or not he should be offended, he finds that he isn’t, finds himself laughing. “God, no,” he says, “Economics.”

And Mark’s doesn’t laugh, but he gives him this private kind of smile, and he still looks like he’s thinking of something else and it may be driving Eduardo crazy.

“Hey, it’s close, but not quite,” he says. “Are you dry, though? What are you drinking, Mark?”

He looks down at his cup. “Um, orange juice?”

And Eduardo is laughing again, caught off guard but not really surprised. Throwing a hand on Mark’s shoulder, out of nowhere he feels like something’s dropping out from underneath him, feels part of his mind swim away, like he’s not as safe from throwing up as he thought.

“Shit,” he says, the strange feeling in his head growing with time, “Gimme a sec,” and he goes to grab water, forgetting to ask if Mark wanted more juice.

The nausea subsides quickly, but he forces himself to finish a full glass anyway, and by the time he’s done, Mark is gone.

*

He makes a point of sitting next to Mark the next time they have a quiz in math, and makes slightly forced small talk with him afterwards until they leave the building. From there Eduardo can’t really put his finger on when they become friends, doesn’t really remember there being an in-between phase where they weren’t in each other’s pocket. The most distinct thing he can remember from the first several weeks after they meet is being convinced he’s about to come down with something the whole time.

One Tuesday, they stand waiting outside the room for their 10:00 AM math lecture with people pressing in from all sides, Eduardo having convinced Mark to sit nearer the middle of the room instead of the back for once. They’re not as tightly packed as people are closer to the door, but they get pushed around a little by people just arriving from earlier classes trying to make their way past them to the front. A couple of people squeeze by on his right so that his left arm presses against Mark’s sweater, and his headache settles down on him again. With it comes a new kind of rush, though, almost like a sense of trepidation. He must be getting worse; at least it’ll all be over with soon, though.

“I think I’m getting sick,” he says to Mark offhandedly.

“Yeah, me too. It’s been a couple weeks actually, it must be going around.”

*

In the following weeks, Eduardo is able to identify other feelings that arrive spontaneously with the headaches. A sense of tenseness he doesn’t recognize as his own when someone from AEPi forces he and a few of his friends to get a picture together for promotional materials. A vague exhaustion and a hunger he can’t account for when Dustin forces them all out of whatever they were doing and crams them on the couch to watch a movie. A weirdly specific feeling of anxiety when he goes over to pull Mark out of studying for a night out. He starts to think that he senses a pattern, but mostly attributes it to midterms season hysteria until one night, when he, Mark and whoever else they’re able to gather up take a cab back from a bar together.

It’s a seven-seater, which makes it a bit of an ordeal to get everyone in. Since he and Mark had been in the middle of a conversation when Chris was orchestrating them all, they end up next to each other in the very back. They lapse into comfortable silence after a while, though everyone around them keeps on talking loudly with one another. Eduardo feels not drunk but pleasantly tipsy as he mentally prepares himself to walk from Kirkland to his own room. Still, he spaces out enough that he jumps when Mark nudges his side to get his attention.

“Hey,” he says, “Are you pretty tired?”

Eduardo sinks down into a more comfortable position on the seat, so he has to look up at him to answer. “Yeah, actually, I was just thinking that.”

Mark quirks his head. “You know, I thought so.”

“You thought so?”

“Yeah, I got the feeling you really weren’t ready to make the walk back to your room from Kirkland.”

Eduardo doesn’t really know what to say, so he’s silent for a beat. “That’s creepy,” is what he comes up with.

Mark just shrugs. “You don’t think we’re a bit psychic? Anyway, I’m sure Chris and Dustin won’t mind you crashing on the couch.”

Eduardo sits back up. “Uh, thanks, man, can we go back to this psychic thing for a sec though?”

Mark pulls a face like he’s thinking. “I don’t know, it’s sort of like your thoughts have been, um,” he gestures with his hands, “rubbing off on me. Since we met, I think.”

“This whole time?” Mark answers him with a drunk-lazy smile. “God, I thought I was going crazy!”

“Same for you?”

“Yeah, dude. _Christ_.”

“I can’t really explain it either. It’s not even, like, thoughts, right? It’s more–”

“Feelings, yeah, just general moods sometimes–”

“And only when we’re touching.”

Eduardo blinks. “That I hadn’t picked up on.”

When Mark answers, he’s perfectly nonchalant, like he hasn’t been making observations on a psychic connection that they _actually_ have. “Yeah, it doesn’t work otherwise, not sure why. But I mean, not touching like – whatever, skin, it can be clothes too. You haven’t noticed?”

“What, like now?”

“Yeah, it’s how I knew you were tired, remember?”

He blinks. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s obviously true. “How come my, uh, reads are never that clear?” he says, trying not to feel a bit cheated.

He can’t tell if Mark’s a little flushed from the drinks or if he’s blushing, though he doesn’t really make much of an effort in figuring it out. “Well, I have to focus on you if I want to actually, you know, distinguish things you’re feeling from one another. I mean, I have to think specifically about it, right?”

Eduardo looks away from Mark, intending to try it out but too embarrassed to face him while he does it. “All right,” he says, finding Mark within himself without much difficulty. It’s like he was sitting unobtrusively in his own area, pressing up against the rest of Eduardo’s mind but not pushing, not spreading out. He focuses in on what registers of Mark, tries to tease it apart, and there’s the shyness he had thought he had seen. He feels it the way he would feel his own emotions, but something about it is distinctly foreign, convincing him it’s Mark. He smiles a little, tempted to act on what he’s discovered. “Hey,” he says, grins stupidly at him in hopes that it makes him feel less self-conscious. “This is pretty fucking cool.”

*

When he knocks on the door of the triple, it’s Chris that opens. Eduardo’s ready to greet him with his usual energy, but receives a tense look before he can, and suddenly he knows what’s going on. He had just finished commiserating with Wendy from Math about her mark on the first Computer Science midterm, but it hadn’t occurred to him until just then that Mark would have gotten his grade back too.

He’s on the couch with his computer open to a screen of code, but he’s just staring at it. Dustin is on a desk chair opposite him, saying, “There’s still the second test and the exam, dude, you still got this.”

As it would turn out, Mark failed, sub-fifty failed, and hasn’t left the couch since he found out.

“It’s just a grade, I’m not– I mean, the test’s not worth that much anyway, and besides, I can code circles around that balding, divorced, prick in my sleep.” He snaps the plastic of the pen in his hand as he talks, looks down as if he forgot he was holding it.

Eduardo figures he must be doing that thing where he tries to be better than anyone who may think he isn’t good enough instead of dealing with how it makes him feel. He sits down on the couch next to him. “Hey, everyone that I’ve talked to pretty much bombed that test, you know Wendy in our math tutorial?”

“No, but I don’t need to hear how she did, I’m sure she’s not–”

“She’s a brilliant girl, Mark, computer science major too, and she didn’t do so hot either.” He reaches to put a hand between Mark’s shoulder blades and remembers he can read his feelings, doesn’t know if Mark would want him doing that just now. He leaves his hand hanging in the air for a second before placing it behind him on the back of the couch. “Actually, she mentioned the class average–”

“Oh, come on, like I give a shit what those morons–”

“Mark, I’m trying to tell you you still did better.”

“Yeah, I know I did, Wardo, I got the same email Whitney and every other sweaty, shit-for-brains, pride-of-their-high-school nobody in that class got, it’s just stupid that if I had _studied_ I wouldn’t be failing this class right now. Christ, I’ve never even come _close_ –”

“Hey, Mark, look,” Eduardo says, almost reaching for him again. “You’re a bright guy, okay? Now you know what kind of questions to expect, you have a better idea of what to study for. The TA in Math today was saying he failed first year physics, and now he’s a grad student here, so, you know, whatever happens, you can deal with it.”

Mark finally looks away from his screen and over at him. “Yeah, I know,” he says.

He feels a little useless, wishes he could do something to actually make him feel better, or at least reach out and touch him, pull him into a hug. “And Chris, Dustin and I are here for you, too, you know that right?”

He nods, glancing over at Eduardo’s arm behind him. Sighing, he shakes his head as if to clear it. “All right, I’m done talking about this. Dustin, put on your lawyer show,” he says, and talks over nearly the whole episode.

*

“So once everything’s up, really the Harvard website is gonna be pretty useless, right, ‘cause you can plan your whole schedule out here, and it’s much nicer anyway, classier.”

Eduardo’s sitting on Mark’s desk as he explains CourseMatch to him, facing away from the computer so he can’t see what he’s gesturing to, but he gets a good view of how excited Mark is.

“And look, if I click on the box for CSC230–” he does “–I have the description, of course, the prerequisites, the exclusions, all that, but over here I can also see who else is taking it, who’s in what lecture. Makes it easier to avoid people, you know? Or sign up with your friends, I guess, so far it’s just Dustin but once it’s up– and look, I’ve made it so…”

He’s a little flushed, and Eduardo wonders idly if he’s been drinking, but figures he’s just worked up, especially seeing as it’s a Tuesday afternoon. He’s not really listening the way he could, but he figures that Mark shouldn’t really mind, given that he’s talking more _at_ him than _to_ him, and keeps lapsing in and out of computer talk that he wouldn’t understand anyway. He sort of lets it wash over him, a bit swept up in how quick Mark’s train of thought is moving, how his mind seems to be going faster than his tongue can keep up with. His eyes are darting back and forth between Eduardo and the computer and he’s sitting up in his seat, sleeves of his sweatshirt shoved up to his elbows. It hits him not for the first time how creative Mark is, and he thinks that if he reached out just a little and touched him, maybe even ran a hand along the veins he can see on his forearm, the buzz of his thoughts would be so _soothing_ , like a gentle pins-and-needles feeling or a rush of water. He keeps his hands where they are, moves to sit on them, but he keeps on staring. He notices that the corner of Mark's mouth is quirked up in a smile as he talks, God, and Eduardo doesn’t know what to do with himself so he gets up, takes a step not really knowing where he’s going, walks around to the other side of Mark’s chair. His eyes follow him as he leans down next to Mark to look at the screen, one hand on the desk and one hand reaching for Mark’s shoulder, diverting to the back of his chair.

Mark looks up at him in silence for a moment, still smiling, and it’s amazing how much energy is flowing out of the guy, how exhilarating it is to be around him right now. “So what do you think?” he asks, as if Eduardo might not say that it’s extraordinary, that Mark is incredible and not just because he’s so brilliant.

“It’s good, man” he says, “It’s great.”

*

A few weeks later it’s summer vacation and Eduardo has an internship in New York, less than an hour away from where Mark’s family lives. It makes him feel a little stupid for missing Mark like crazy anyway. Maybe if they talked a little more than they are it would be different, not that Eduardo spends too much time thinking about it. He figures that if it’s never Mark who calls _him_ to catch up, but only the other way around, that that’s just who Mark is; it doesn’t say anything about what their friendship means to him. And besides, neither of them have invited the other over yet. For Eduardo’s part, he hasn’t been able to come up with something he could tell Mark to explain why he wants to see him in person; it’s easy to tell someone you called just to catch up, but he doesn’t know how to say to Mark that he misses his company and the feeling of his presence without using those words, which of course isn’t an option. So he keeps on calling him, tries to make that enough, and then runs out of things to talk about, stays on the line with him without saying anything for minutes at a time.

“Mark?” He says, at the end of one of these silences.

It’s a few seconds before he answers. “Yeah?”

Eduardo realizes he didn’t have anything to say to him, takes a moment to come up with something. “How are your sisters?”

He listens as Mark gripes about them lovingly for a few minutes, but doesn’t end up paying that much attention, too busy listening to Mark’s voice. He nearly misses it when Mark says, “They’re planning something for my birthday, actually.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, it’s on a Wednesday but they have school, you know, so they want to do something the weekend before.”

“That sounds nice,” Eduardo says.

Mark’s silent for a few beats. “I think it’s just gonna be a dinner at this restaurant, but the day should be pretty good too.”

“Yeah, yeah, definitely.”

Eduardo hears him sigh on the other end of the line. “Uh, so they’re trying to figure out how many people to say, for the reservation…”

It’s a second before Eduardo understands that he’s being invited to celebrate Mark’s birthday with his family. “Oh!” he says, probably more touched than he should be, “Well, let them know I’d love to come. If uh, if I’m–”

“Yeah, yeah, you are.” There’s a rustling noise like Mark is passing the phone to his other hand. “Um, if you need to stay the weekend, we have a guest room.”

Eduardo smiles, gets a rush of warmth for Mark, feels embarrassed about it. “Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks, man.”

“Yeah, don’t mention it. You been keeping up with basketball playoffs?”

“No, why?”

“Um, me neither.”

 

He offers to take a cab or rent a car, but Mark insists on picking him up in his family’s minivan. For the entire week before the day they agreed to meet, Eduardo will remember that he’s going to see him again every so often and forget whatever he’s doing. He even calls on the Tuesday to see if Mark can make it for Friday night instead of Saturday morning. He finishes getting ready an hour early, and so spends about 50 minutes pacing around his apartment and 10 more waiting outside in the heat.

He didn’t want Mark to waste time with parking, so he has to hurry to throw his stuff in the back seat when he pulls up. He does take the time to pull Mark into a hug over the centre console, though, patting him on the back, taking in the feeling of his mind again, and, sure, maybe breathing him in a little over the car honks coming from behind them. When he pulls away he’s met with Mark’s signature half-smile, and he finds that he’s missed it these past couple weeks. “It’s good to see you,” he says.

The whole way there Eduardo can’t stop looking over at him. The set of his shoulders, the curve of his neck. The view on the highway they take isn’t all that impressive when he drives down it a few years later, but in his memory it’s picturesque, it’s a gorgeous day and he’s so happy he’s pretty sure Mark must be able to feel it even without touching him. He feels lucky, more than anything, to be sharing time and space in his life with him, to be on this average stretch of highway as the sun sets, to be able to look over and see Mark looking back. He wants to kiss him, but he’s more than content to exchange quiet smiles and look back out the window. They don’t say much.

He thinks about seeing Mark’s childhood bedroom, driving by his high school, walking around all his old haunts. When they make it to his neighbourhood, pass by all the houses, he feels like he’s being trusted with something precious. It’s that lucky feeling again, to be given this part of Mark’s history.

He follows behind him when they walk in the door to his house, shakes even his youngest sister’s hand (“Oh my god,” Mark says, rolling his eyes), altogether more nervous than he should be. He soon finds that Mark’s whole family is lovely, though; he and his mother get along like a house on fire within five minutes. They’re all eager to embarrass Mark with childhood stories; how they signed him up for T-Ball, how he’d sit down on the field during every game and rip grass out while the others were playing. He hears about his Star Wars phase, how protective he used to be over his action figures. At one point Mark actually gets up from the couch and tries to leave, but Eduardo looks up at him, smiles, pulls him back down by his sleeve.

“Sweet boy,” his mother says, “He hasn’t told you about Elana Delmore in middle school has he?”

Eduardo looks over at Mark, “He has not.”

Mark interjects, “Okay, I’m showing Wardo around town, we’ll be back later.”  
  
They all laugh, and he considers asking him to stay, but finds that he can’t refuse the opportunity to get to know Mark’s hometown. He gets led out through the back, Mark stopping to grab a couple sweaters and steal a few beers on the way.

*

They end up by the river. It’s dark, so he can’t really see the park they’re in properly, but he can hear the water running and he’s wearing a sweater that Mark gave him and it smells like him, and no one’s really around except for the two of them. He realizes that he’s used to the bar setting when he goes out with Mark, finds sitting with him in the quiet to be so much more to handle. It’s the luxury of time alone with him and beginning to learn him in this whole new way, all against the hush of nature around them. Getting to see all these important parts of his life, the parks he would go to as a kid and the block where he had his first drink, his family and his old friends’ houses, it feels so intimate. He thinks about reaching over and taking his hand, feeling at him, seeing what he picks up, maybe pulling his arm around his waist and nosing in between his neck and shoulder. Instead he stays where he is, sits cross-legged on the grass with him for hours, and he aches for more. It feels like these are all parts of Mark’s life given to him, and now he wants to take as much of it as he can, wants to show that he can handle it.

A couple drinks in he’ll stretch out onto his back despite the dew and despite his suit, close his eyes and feel Mark watching him, though it will probably be his imagination.

When they make it back, the house is dark and everyone seems to be asleep. They go in through the back, which has been left open for them, both of them fairly drunk and trying to make as little noise as possible. Eduardo walks behind Mark, drags his feet, doesn’t want the evening to end just yet. They make it up the stairs, and Mark keeps looking back at him like he’s about to laugh, but then he doesn’t say anything. His door is closer to them, so when they reach it he throws a hand on Eduardo’s shoulder, whispers “‘Night, Wardo.” He reaches to close it, and Eduardo follows him in before he can think too much about it.

He falls into his four-poster twin bed with his clothes still on, waits a moment before changing into just his boxers. “I’m not gonna sleep yet,” he says. “There’s, um, a chair by the desk if you want to take it.”

He finds that the chair offered to him is covered in clothes and in paper, as is the desk itself and most other places he could perch, so he stands around instead.

Mark looks like he’s about to fall asleep, sprawled over the covers on his stomach, his bare back exposed and looking up at Eduardo from his pillow. He thinks again of kissing him, crouching down by his bed and holding him by the back of his head, going slow with him but meaning every second. He pictures himself smiling against his lips, lying down next to him in his childhood bedroom.

“Um,” he says, getting another look at Mark fighting sleep in his bed. “I, uh, I better go, actually,” and he does, he walks himself through Mark’s door and into the anonymous guest room, misses the Kirkland couch just a little.

*

They don’t see each other in person again until the next school year, and Eduardo makes up for it by spending even more time in the new Kirkland suite than he used to in the old. Often he’ll use late-night studying as an excuse to stay over and he’ll wake up for breakfast with everyone else, half-heartedly offer to help Chris or Dustin cook, end up talking with a very sleepy Mark on the kitchen stools instead.

He gets a toothbrush chucked at him when Chris comes home late to find him on the couch one time. He takes it out of the box, uses it, and keeps it in the same cup as everyone else’s.

So he and his new room end up having a complicated relationship. It’s not that it’s unfamiliar to him – he does stay there _most_ nights, after all – but it still doesn’t feel like he lives there, isn’t homey the way he’d like it to be.

He’s thinking about this with his economics textbook open in front of him late one night when his cell phone rings. It’s Mark, but he hangs up before Eduardo can answer, so he calls him back.

“Were you asleep?” Mark asks by way of greeting.

“No,” replies Eduardo, giving up on the reading and putting his textbook away, “Just studying, sort of.”

“Oh, okay.”

Eduardo expects him to bring up what he called him for, but he doesn’t say anything on the other end of the line. “What’s up, man,” he prompts.

Mark sighs. “Uh, nothing much, you?”

A little confused, Eduardo wonders if Mark called him just to talk, if he became that kind of person sometime since he last saw him. “Nothing much,” he says, smiling a little, “I’m gonna have to have words with Browning if he thinks he can get away with assigning us readings this long every week, though.”

“Economics?”

“Yeah, it’s not even that boring, just about a million pages.”

“Mmm.”

They’re silent for a minute. Eduardo’s starting to get used to it, with Mark. “You were gonna catch up with that assignment in your OS class, right?”

“Yeah, I just finished,” he says, and Eduardo can almost see him curled up on his bed, eyes red from staring at his screen for so long. His brain would be going too fast for him to sleep, or at least it would feel that way from what Eduardo could pick up if he touched him, fleetingly, like he usually does. “I think I might be burnt out,” he says, as if it’s surprising to him.

“Mark Zuckerberg, burnt out?” he teases, and he _won’t_ invite himself over, he can’t turn up at Kirkland at 3 AM. Really he should be _asleep_ , instead of out fucking up his sleep cycle trying to touch Mark without making it seem intentional for hours on end.

It’s another few beats of silence before Mark says anything. “Can I come over?”

And it almost hurts him, because he really should get to sleep and he only has a single so there’s nowhere for Mark to crash anyway, and he tells him as much, but he still imagines Mark crawling into bed with him, thinks about wading into his mind and burrowing in comfortably with his face pressed against Mark’s chest and Mark’s arms around him pulling him close. It’d sure do a lot to make this place feel more like home, he thinks, surprising himself.

“Yeah, I know,” Marks says on the other end of the line, still on the question of coming over. “I just thought I’d ask.”

*

“Beer to celebrate?”

Eduardo is surprised to hear Mark’s voice; he had thought that he was on one of his everything-shut-out coding binges. He must have heard him sigh with relief when he finished his essay and closed his laptop. “No, I’m good, you go ahead though,” he answers.

Eduardo had gone down to work in Kirkland partly because of the routine, partly for the company, and, though he’d deny it if asked, partly in hopes that he could sit next to Mark, touch him and wrap himself up in his mind while he worked. More than four hours later, he finally puts his laptop onto the coffee table and gets up to sit on the arm of Mark’s chair and bother him for a bit, but he stops halfway. “Actually, you know if you guys have anything I could eat?”

“Uh, you’ll have to check, honestly.”

Finding very little that isn’t suspiciously close to expiring, he winds up making them both ham and cheese sandwiches. Mark follows him to the kitchen but just leans against the counter silently while he works. He never gets himself that beer.

It’s late enough that everyone in Kirkland seems to either be asleep or out enjoying their Friday night. Dustin and Chris had left before Eduardo arrived, so there’s a possibility that they could be coming back soon. Eduardo doesn’t really think about it as he hands Mark his sandwich and sits on the tabletop of the island, stretching his legs out so his feet rest on the counter beside Mark. He’s in his usual hoodie and gym shorts combination, but, having lent his stupid flip flops to Eduardo, he’s just in his socks. He curls his toes underneath his feet, and he keeps looking up at Eduardo staring, and he has this amazing sort of unfocused look in his eyes. He stares at the counter and doesn’t say anything as he eats. Eduardo’s too exhausted to really talk either, but he finds that he doesn’t want to go home and sleep. Mark isn’t begging off either.

He starts thinking a bit about his arguments again without meaning to, about whether he could have elaborated on his second point a little more, and feels almost nauseous with how tired he is of going over everything. Mark shifts his weight where he stands, licks his lips and Eduardo thinks _fuck it,_ reaches out for Mark’s hand to try and cool his brain down. He feels his eyes on him as he takes it and rests it on his thigh, runs a thumb along the palm and lets his thoughts wash over him. Mark’s head still feels busy despite the hour, though Eduardo doesn’t put in the effort to pick out and name anything. More than specific thoughts, he picks up the feeling of _Mark_ , this kind of energy that he’s become sensitive to, that he always wakes up for. He unfurls each of Mark’s fingers individually, wanders around in his mind a bit. He recognizes the sharp intelligence he encounters every day, but also a softer, almost delicate part of him that he knows somehow he needs to be careful around. He still hasn’t quite figured out what they can see of each other, so he’s not sure what it is, but moving around it feels like avoiding a secret, a bruise. Still, he feels comfortable looking into it from outside, observing it. He doesn’t press in.

Looking up from Mark’s palm, Eduardo finds him looking back. Mark pushes himself off the counter and steps forward, putting his sandwich down and moving Eduardo’s hand onto the tabletop so he can have his turn at playing with his fingers, and out of nowhere Eduardo feels this crystal-clear warmth, this wonder at the moment that’s gone so quickly he can only hope it wasn't him that sent it out. He didn’t see it coming and didn’t actively tamp it down, but when he checks for changes in Mark’s expression or the way he’s holding himself, it doesn’t seem like it was him either. It likely wasn’t, but unfortunately Eduardo’s heartbeat has picked up a little anyway, and Mark can probably sense the way he’s mooning over him. He avoids Mark’s eyes, and hops off of the island to start putting everything away before he can begin to wonder what it would be like to kiss him.

In the meantime, Mark migrates over to the couch, leaning his head against the back and closing his eyes. Eduardo watches from the kitchen for a moment, thinks about pulling Mark down onto him when he lies down, sleeping like that. Instead, he settles himself on the couch next to him, on his side with his feet pressed up against Mark’s thigh, and stares at the coffee stable until he dozes off.

When he wakes up, it’s to Dustin mumbling “ _Fuck_ ,” and leaning down to pick something up off of the kitchen floor. Mark isn’t on the couch anymore, not that he’d have any reason to be.

*

On another night, he’s already in his own room when he finishes his presentation at two in the morning, and he could really use some sleep. He closes his laptop and sits cross-legged on his bed, and finds that even though he’s tired he wants to visit Kirkland for a few minutes. It shouldn’t really be a problem, except that it is 2:00 AM, and this is getting dangerously close to becoming a habit. He tries to reason with himself that if he were to head out, he’d have to get changed out of the clothes he put on so he wouldn’t crease his suit, and anyway he should really have more dignity than to crawl over in the middle of the night, when Chris and Dustin are almost definitely asleep, even if Mark may not be. Would he even be able to get in? How does he know he wouldn’t be bothering anyone in their sleep? What if he went to all the trouble, the changing outfits and the 10-minute walk, and no one was awake to open the door? He knows that Mark has an assignment due for one of his electives in the morning, so he could be up working on that, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is 2:00 AM.

So he sends him a text just in case, not really expecting a reply very soon seeing as it’s Mark, and goes to brush his teeth, rinse the day off of his face. When he comes back to where his phone is charging, the screen reads “sure just finished might be cleaning my room for a bit.”

And so Eduardo heads over, though he compromises with himself by going in his hoodie and gym shorts; it’s just Mark, anyway. He texts him when he gets to their door so he doesn’t wake anyone up by knocking.

When he comes to open, Mark looks a little worn out from the work, standing in the doorway just looking at him, blocking his path in, but he still gives Eduardo a smile at his outfit. Eduardo follows him quietly through the door once he thinks to move over, across the lounge area and into his room, which has several stacks of papers and other shit all over the floor.

He waits for Mark to close the door to his room before he asks, “So what brought on this cleaning urge?”

“Uh, well, it was getting harder to get to my bed from the door, you know?”

Too tired to give him an answer, he sprawls out over Mark’s unmade bed, pulls one of his pillows under his head as Mark gives him a look he doesn’t bother to interpret. It smells like him.

He watches Mark fiddle around his room, move a couple of the piles into his drawers or onto other, smaller piles somewhere on a bookshelf. He makes it as far as looking at the clothes on his floor before he invites Eduardo to watch a movie with him.

Vaguely aware that it should be getting close to 3:00 AM and he’s been up for about 19 hours, he agrees, only complains a little when Mark pulls up some Tarantino grindhouse bullshit. They set Mark’s computer up on the desk chair and sit with their backs against the wall on his bed, a nice foot and a half of distance between them. Eduardo thinks to himself that not only does he have to watch some poor woman bleed all over the place for two hours, but he doesn’t even get to be touching Mark during that time.

So he doesn’t really pay attention, watches the colours more than anything, and Mark sits cross-legged with his hands in his lap next to him the whole time, doesn’t even look over at him the way that, okay, fine, he wants him to. He just sits there, and in his head Eduardo sees himself leaning down onto him, or laying back and draping his legs on Mark’s lap, or curling up with his head on Mark’s thigh. Eduardo is so tired he thinks he might actually tell Mark how fed up he is with thinking about touching him, and not actually doing so.

Mark’s bed is tucked into the corner of his room, and Eduardo is sitting so he can lean back against two walls if he moves Mark’s pillows over. He puts one up against his back and he doesn’t mean to fall asleep like that, but the next time he’s aware of what’s happening around him is when he feels the bed shift as Mark gets up to close his laptop, the movie having finished. He’s barely conscious, certainly not enough to remember anything the next morning or to offer to move to the couch, but he feels Mark put a knee down next to him, hesitate for a beat, and climb in. He lets the covers be pulled out from under him and pulls them around him tighter once Mark is in properly. He’s fully asleep again in seconds.

In his dream, he’s grabbing his keys and getting ready to leave his family’s house in Miami with his cousin. He asks her if she’s ready to head out, and when he opens the door it leads into the triple.

He forgets where he was meant to be going, and when he looks behind him his cousin isn’t there anymore, but his house is. And then he steps through into the triple, and it’s gone, changed to the Kirkland hallway.

The only person he can see is Mark, sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn in his lap. He’s vaguely aware of something playing on the TV. “Wardo, how did you–” he cuts himself off.

“How did I what?”

Mark shakes his head. “Nothing, I guess I just didn’t notice you get up. Did you change?”

He looks down at his outfit; he and his cousin were going somewhere special, so he had chosen it carefully. “No, I– no,” he says through the distinct feeling that he’s in the wrong place.

Mark sets the popcorn down on the table and looks up at him. “You coming back?” he asks with this small smile.

It’s not until then that he notices he’s just been standing by the door. He tries to blink his confusion away and goes over to sit next to Mark on the couch. He leaves room between them because that’s what they do now, but Mark moves over, leans against him with his head on his shoulder. He takes one of his hands and laces their fingers together, and it’s such a _strange_ thing for him to do, and it’s so _nice_ that Eduardo stops moving in hopes that Mark won’t realize what he’s doing and pull away.

But after a couple of minutes like that he shifts a little and then, okay, he’s leaving gentle kisses on his neck.

Eduardo suppresses a gasp but his hand tightens on Mark’s. He keeps on kissing him, works his way up behind his ear with a hand on the other side of his neck and Eduardo just melts, leans his head back against the couch and licks his lips. Mark just keeps pulling him closer, leaning up into him with one leg over his body, and when he moves to climb over Eduardo properly, he whispers under his breath, “God, Wardo, you’re–” and then he leans down to kiss his lips. This time Eduardo’s little noise does make it out of him. “You know how crazy you make me?” Mark says.

And then he’s kissing him again, hands gentle on Eduardo’s jaw and Eduardo can’t think what got into him that’s he’s acting like this is _normal_ for them, but he doesn’t complain, just pulls Mark closer by the waist and kisses him, and kisses him.

And when he wakes up it’s still dark out and he’s still on Mark’s bed, but he’s moved in his sleep so his face is pressed against Mark’s chest and their legs are tangled together. He only just feels the stray end of Mark’s thoughts leave him as Mark pulls his arms back from around him and stumbles clumsily out of his own bed towards the living room.

*

He wakes up in the same private study room he intended to take a 10-minute nap in, except it’s three hours later and he crashed so hard he dreamed.

It’s like he was revisiting the dream that he and Mark somehow shared the other night, or that Mark had been having and he had walked into. He was sort of taking another look around. It’s all gentle hands and the feeling of Mark’s breath against his neck, the smell of him. Just sense memories, though enough to make him embarrassed almost as soon as he wakes up.

It takes him a moment to remember where he is, and when he checks his watch his final is in five hours, so he starts packing up to head to his room, maybe catch some rest. Walking out of the library, what’s most striking is that it’s light out, that some people are even buying their morning coffees. And then, of course, comes the fact that it is pouring rain.

Pulling the hood of his sweater up and crossing his arms over his chest, he marches into the storm, near-defenceless. The rain looks wrong somehow against the thin light of the morning, like the world isn’t awake enough to be so violent yet, and he could still be dreaming if it weren’t for the cold of the water sinking through the fabric of his sweater. The effect is made worse by Mark walking up towards him, in flip flops but underneath an umbrella, looking as though it weren’t about six in the morning.

“Wardo, hey, how’s it going?”

“Um,” he says, squinting at Mark through the rain in his eyes. “Decent, you know, how about you?”

“Good, good, making good progress on CourseMatch, should be ready soon. I was gonna get breakfast, or, um, something, you wanna come?”

What he would really like is to move under a roof to talk, or to squeeze under Mark’s umbrella. “Uh…”

Also to sleep properly, dry off and hope he’ll be as awake as he needs to be for the exam.

“Sure,” he says.

He feels angry with Mark, for some reason, after the dream, as he walks along beside him getting rained on. It’s not that anything’s _wrong_ , not really, at least. He’s just so restless and Mark, as always, is so collected, almost impassive, and with three hours of library-desk sleep in him, it makes Eduardo go a little crazy. He wants to have an argument with him, or maybe have him pull him into his chest, let Eduardo get his hoodie wet. Right there in the middle of campus, he wants to make a scene for the few people out, complete with shouting, gestures, maybe even tears on his part, the works. He feels a little like he might overflow all over this sidewalk, run down into the storm drain with the rain, if he doesn’t get Mark to notice him like he wants.

“So I didn’t know you went to breakfast places,” he says.

“I didn’t know you owned basketball shorts,” Mark answers, not looking at his outfit but clearly having taken in his 2-AM-at-the-library get up.

They keep walking together making idle small-talk, the kind Eduardo knows Mark can’t stand, and, for the first time, he gets self-conscious about it. He could stand in the pouring rain listening to Mark’s story about his Classics professor forever, but what about him? Is there a limit to his patience for how Eduardo wants to take ages making the 5-minute walk to the coffee shop, laze around Kirkland until he winds up sleeping there, sit in the dining hall with him for hours at a time, go slow with him? The directionless anger in him churns and Mark looks at him out of the corner of his eye every so often and it probably wouldn’t be so bad if he weren’t soaking fucking wet.

Later he feels like a zombie sitting in front of Mark as he eats a scone from a campus-staple coffee shop he claims never to have heard of. He can barely get his eyes to focus on one thing, and when he does it’s Mark’s fingers bringing pieces of his scone to his pink lips, or the way his eyes look when his head is bent down towards his plate. So he looks down at his hands instead.

*

Mark is the only one in the triple when he heads over a few days later. He’s sitting at his computer, but his headphones are around his neck, so Eduardo figures he must have heard him come in, if distantly. He goes over to him, puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey–”  
  
Mark jumps, punching in a string of random letters and numbers into his code. He highlights and deletes them before turning to Eduardo.

“Jesus!” He says with a sigh, “You scared me Wardo, you can’t just come in and– and shove your brain in like that–”

It’s kind of annoying that Mark’s so quick to snap, but a lot of the time it’s more funny than anything. “I’m sorry, the door was open, I came over to see if you wanted–”

“Well clearly I don’t, I’m obviously busy, and really you should’ve _seen_ that from–”

He can get pretty bitchy after pulling all-nighters, though.

“Look, I didn’t mean to–”

“But you did, so I guess it doesn’t really matter what you _meant_.”

“Mark, relax, I’m trying to apologize.”

He sighs, collecting himself. “All right, I get that. But you do have to understand that you can’t just barge in anywhere you like, Wardo, this isn’t the first time. I mean, I’m trying to focus here and then you’re right in my _space_ and in my _head_ , it’s like I can’t get away from you sometimes.”

It’s unkind of him to say, but the hurt is sort of peripheral; he knows that Mark is just sleep-deprived and probably still a little surprised. “Hey,” he says.

“Okay, fine, but you have to admit it can get to be a bit _much–_ ”

“Mark, come on.” It’s not hurt that he’s feeling, he convinces himself, it’s irritation with how quickly Mark lashes out.

“Well, it’s all the time, you know? Has no one ever told you you can get to be a bit too _touchy_? I mean it’s like you don’t even realize–”

“No, Mark, no one ever has.” _I guess we’re doing this now_ , he thinks to himself, tired of stupid fights like this. “Maybe, I don’t know, it’s _not_ me that’s the problem, maybe you just need to sleep.”

“Okay, there’s no need to be passive aggressive, I’m just saying you should think a bit about social – you know – conventions.”

He almost laughs. “Social conventions, huh? Kind of like, you know, meet at 8:00 if you tell your friend you’ll meet at 8:00, and–”

“You’re still mad about that?”

“I waited _three and a half hours_ for you, Mark, God, and this is not about me, you can be in the wrong sometimes, too, have you considered that?” He doesn’t roll his eyes, because that would be unproductive for getting this argument over with, but it’s a close thing.

“Actually, it kind of is about you, back when we were talking about you sneaking up on me, it was about how you don’t consider what other people might think when you touch them, you don’t _think_ that maybe I _don’t_ want you in my head at all hours of the day–”

“‘All hours,’ Christ, Mark, you’re so–”

“– and you don’t think that maybe I don’t experience this the exact same fucking way you do.”

“If it bothered you that much, you could’ve said something, I don’t know, a year ago?”

“Look, I’m not asking too much here, I’m just saying you should consider– cause you’re a lot, right, having you in my head, it’s– I’m still getting _used_ to it and– you’re playing stupid, you know it’s not about it bothering me, Wardo.”

This time he does laugh. “No, I really don’t, Mark, in fact I think it’d help us all if you could just _say_ –”

“It’s about how you know the way you– how you can tell how hard you make it to focus for me, but you still come and _touch_ me–”

“Look, I’m sorry I’m getting in the way of your work, I don’t mean to _inconvenience_ you, but–”

“Wardo, please, you’re not listening.” He gets up but his headphones are still connected to the computer, so he has to untangle himself before he can look back at Eduardo. “I don’t hold it against you that you don’t– that’s it’s not the same for you– or, at least I’m trying not to and it’s mostly working, but, I mean, it’s not fair that you don’t consider, um, me, when you…”

Mark is looking at him like Eduardo was the one who said something hurtful, shifting where he stands and wearing this confrontational look on his face. Eduardo recognizes it as the expression he wears when he’s trying to be annoyed rather than hurt about something.

He never consciously ruled himself out from ending up on the receiving end, but he still doesn’t expect it.

Fed up with trying to guess at what exactly Mark means, Eduardo reaches out for his hand, hoping to get some kind of read on what he’s thinking. And he lets him for a few moments, he makes it as far as an initial flow of hot, lashing emotion before Mark pulls his hand away. He reaches again, and Mark takes a step back, saying, “Wardo” in a way that makes him think about the part of him he found that night in the kitchen, like a bruise in his mind or on his heart.

He sighs, picks up where he left off. “I don’t hold it against you, I just wish you’d have a little… mercy. It’s not – easy, you know?

He’s looking down towards the floor, so it’s hard for Eduardo to get a read on his eyes, but there’s so much shyness and _shame_ just in the way he holds himself, and Eduardo can’t think of the words to say.

“And I wish you wouldn’t make me say it, Wardo, is it not enough? You also have to hear me ask you to take it easy on me?”

“Mark, I don’t think–” He tries to say something, but he can’t explain to him properly. He knows that what Mark needs is to talk this out, and he knows that he needs to hear Eduardo say it, but instead, he walks over to him, so close that he has to look down to see Mark’s eyes. He takes one of Mark’s hands, feels a surge of emotions, places it on the back of his neck.

For a few terrifying moments, he wonders whether he had understood the whole situation wrong. Mark spends a moment searching his face, his eyes. With a deep breath, he brings himself even closer and all Mark has to do is lean up a little bit and they’re kissing, finally.

It’s tentative, a brush of lips against his like a question, but it’s what he’s been waiting for. It’s the easiest thing in the world when he kisses him back, slowly but properly, once, twice.

“Wardo, please,” Mark says, forehead against Eduardo’s. “You don’t have to– I mean, you don’t know, you can’t… do this to me. I won’t get over this, Wardo.”

It hurts him to hear, and he pulls Mark closer. “You know,” he says, doing his best to make Mark feel what he does through the connection. “I don’t think I will either.” He kisses him. “I don’t think I want to.”

Underneath his hands, Mark might be shaking lightly, but he kisses him back and Eduardo feels his emotions pick up speed. He lays himself out for Mark, lets him look around in his mind until he understands, and then Mark starts to kiss him in this different way and he’s leaning up into him like he can’t get close enough.

It’s like he can’t decide where to put his hands; they hold Eduardo steady from his shoulders, they pull him in by his hips, one finds its way to his jaw while the other pushes up into his hair and all the while Mark is choking back these amazing little noises. All this time he’s thought so much about touching him and now here he is, suddenly, his body so wonderfully alive with thoughts and feelings and a pulse he can feel on the hand he has against his neck, and there aren’t enough ways to give himself to him. He starts by kissing his neck, and he has to stop when Mark says his name like he’s trying to tell him something.

In his mind Mark feels almost the same, except for something about him that’s opened.

Some time later he lets Mark take him into his room and push him against the door as soon as it closes, lets him unbutton his shirt and kiss along his stomach. They’ll make it to the bed and Mark will have an arm around his back while Eduardo brings him off, and he’ll get to see the way his eyes close and his mouth hangs open, he’ll get to hear the sounds Mark makes when he comes and know he’s the one making him feel that way. He’ll fall asleep in his bed on purpose (though not without thinking about it first) and when he wakes up Mark will still be there, already awake and looking at him like he’s trying to figure him out. And Eduardo won’t mind it at all.

The next morning Chris raises his eyebrows at them when they leave Mark’s room at the same time, but he doesn’t say anything. Eduardo pours himself cereal while Mark sits on the kitchen counter fighting sleep. He has this soft look about him that makes Eduardo wants to kiss him, so he does, because he can now, and Mark smiles against his lips. “You’re pretty awesome, you know that?” he says.

Eduardo kisses him again, a hand resting on either side of his hips. “You’re pretty awesome too, Mark.”

*

It’s 4:00 AM and they’ve all spent the night out at several different bars; this leaves Eduardo, Mark, Dustin and Chris all struggling to sober up on the Kirkland couches. Dustin and Chris are both totally spaced out in their respective chairs, and Eduardo’s still a little too drunk to focus properly himself, so Mark is really the only one paying attention to the TV where he leans, miraculously, under the crook of Eduardo’s shoulder. He can tell from the way his thoughts are moving that he’s not making much sense of what’s going on, but he’s at least following; they’re still moving quickly, but clumsily, like they’re tripping over themselves. He pulls Mark closer to him.

“Hey,” Mark says, poking him in the stomach.

“Hmm?” he answers at length.

“That’s like you and me,” Mark says, gesturing to the screen.

When Eduardo looks he realizes it’s a Star Trek re-run, an old, old episode from the 60’s, by the looks of the cast. “What?” he asks.

“He’s reading his mind, Wardo.”

On the screen, Commander Spock has some alien business going on with his hand against the bad guy’s face.

Chris snorts. “Dude, you need to get to bed, Wardo can’t read your mind.”  
  
“No, I can,” Wardo says, feeling slightly offended.

“Not exactly _read_ , just–”

“Aw man, if you guys get a mind-melt going right now, I’ll give you a million dollars,” Dustin says, slumped all the way down so his neck is almost at a right angle.

“It is not a _mind-meld_ , Dustin, it’s–”

Chris buries his face in his hands. “Okay, we are _not_ that drunk, man, you can’t expect that–”  
  
“Hey, look, we’ll show you,” he says, too drunk to care that he's coming off as defensive.

Chris laughs, but he comes around with an, “Okay, okay, do what you gotta do.”

Eduardo realizes that Chris is humouring him, and Dustin might be too, but he’s too eager to show them to really care. He turns Mark around in his arms and Mark lets himself be manhandled easily, laughs when Eduardo puts his hand against his face for dramatic effect. He closes his eyes too, even though he doesn’t have to.

Mark’s mind, now he’s focusing on it, is still so busy. It's going in all these different directions, not very effectively, but certainly with a lot of energy. Singing over everything else is this feeling of happiness, just complete comfort and satisfaction with everything going on around him. Eduardo is only barely conscious of their friends watching them, gets carried away looking around. He steps into that delicate part of Mark’s mind and it wraps itself around him, takes him in and fills him with a kind of rush he’s sure he recognizes.

When he opens his eyes, Mark is looking at him. His expression is a little bleary with how drunk he still is, but he’s smiling and it’s so sappy and affectionate. He laughs a little under his breath and hides his face in the couch.

“Actually,” Eduardo says to Chris, suddenly remembering where they are. “Maybe we’ll show you tomorrow,” and leads Mark into his room.

**Author's Note:**

> *youtube comments voice* anyone here in 2019?
> 
> If you leave a comment, know you have my undying love for that. Also I don't know Harvard life so if something about that isn't accurate here that's why lmao


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